A Travelling Gentleman

By Alain Joseph Mbarushimana

Here we learn about a pleasant trip our good author made to Mexico, an eye-opening visit to Toronto, and some interesting adventures in Rwanda. The reader will find some of the misadventures hilarious – they can laugh if they want to, even shed tears, but when it was happening to our good author, he was clearly not having fun. All he wanted was to kayak in the Gulf of Mexico, meet a lion in Rwanda's national park, and swim in a crater lake on the top of a volcano. The author swears that there is a deep lesson in this fine book, but refuses to reveal it on the back cover.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9780228892236

Alain Joseph Mbarushimana

Alain was born and raised in Rwanda. He is a former journalist who currently lives in Montreal. Before publishing this delightful travelogue, he worked as an awesome financial specialist. Because of his love for storytelling, he also studies modern languages and literature at Concordia University, so he can fine-tune the other interesting books and novels he is working on.

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Copyright © 2023 by Alain Joseph MBARUSHIMANA

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-9222-9 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-9221-2 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-9223-6 (eBook)

Table of Contents

And so the adventures begin!

To the girl with a bow in her hair

Abracadabra

Senorita passing by

Queen’s Day

Mamacita

On a scale of one to three, how drunk is he?

A Shark Tank business idea

Ballad pour Mexico

Fin del viaje

Toronto

Toronto behind the scenes

Train vs bus

Rich poetry

The lady of Kingston

A secret wife

College-educated restaurants

Strip club

Denny’s breakfast and the fraudster coffee

Something wrong with the museum

Abdel Halim the comedian taxi driver

My mental state as I enter the taxi and the new year in general

Abdel Halim the comedian taxi driver tries to make me laugh

Forget the Taj Mahal, here is Little India

Comedy club

The Cathedral Basilica

Gone but not entirely forgotten

CN Tower

A ceramic investment

Captain Alain

Rwanda

Green Hotel turning yellow

Madamazela

We sang Hosanna on repeat

Akagera National Park pleasure trip

I miraculously escape dangers

Hotel room therapy

Smart or stupid to climb a volcano? Only time will tell

Sir Christopher Alanmbus, Captain of Mount Bisoke expedition

The legend of Ibere Rya Bigogwe

My friend Bob dies for a short time

Bob’s resurrection

King’s Palace Museum

Alain and the chocolate factory

The wedding that went well

Time to go! The party is over!

An expensive Kinyarwanda joke

It’s a wrap!

About the Author

To my dear reader

And so the adventures begin!

Before we start I want you to know that I wrote this travelogue to you, my dear reader, to my good friends, and to that one rascal enemy of mine who thought that I couldn’t do it. As you read this personal account, I invite you to relax and enjoy the story. I pray that the Good Lord bless you, keep you, and not forget me. As for my enemy, may Saint Conspicuous (patron saint of fools and stuffed animals) give him seventy-six years of bad luck, and may he never finish reading this joyful work.

Amen!

THE AUTHOR

To the girl with a bow in her hair

My dear reader, know that this insanity started one day when I got bored beyond my limits and decided that the only remedy to that boredom was to take a nice little escapade. I wanted to go to a place where I could see the ocean, eat exotic fruits, do cool stuff, probably get robbed, and then come back to tell those stories and see the jealousy in the faces of my friends who do not travel or get robbed in foreign lands. I was a little miserable before I decided to pack my bags and escape. My usual work week only lasted two days: one long, long Monday, and half a Sunday. I was very busy with work and stupidly decided to go back to university part-time. It all looked like Mondays to me. Sometimes I could not even remember what day it was. God should have helped us by making the sun change colors every day. How this technology escaped Him is a mystery.

This trip was my attempt to clear my head. A week prior I had shaved my head, but that did not clear it at all. I knew that along the way I would get bored again, and would impulsively pack my bags and go hunting for other adventures. On the trip I took my notebook because I was writing a small conduct book that I planned to entitle: How to chew guavas without hurting your teeth. One night I decided to take some notes about this voyage instead, and suddenly the idea of a travelogue came to mind, to write a series of books about my voyages.

I had also decided to resume a novel entitled Steal a Sorcerer’s Heart. It is a about a young Kenyan man who falls in love with a pretty French sorcerer. Every day he writes her a love song, a letter, or a poem until one day she agrees to marry him and convert to Christianity. For a while I had been discouraged at the thought of continuing the story, after an unfortunate event. I had given the paper copy of the early draft to a friend of mine who is an editor, and a rude rat at her apartment ate three poems and four love letters from the manuscript. I thought it was a sign from The Heavens not to pursue such a story. A few days before my trip to Mexico I happened to be talking to her, and one conversation led to another, and the subject of a poem-eating rat slipped in. She told me that after that criminal offense against my poetry, the same mischievous rat got hungry again and resolved to have her favorite dress for lunch. I do not remember the remedy she used to avenge my story and her dress. All I remember is that that night she was angry, and that multiple rats were assassinated. This kind of justice put me in a good mood and I decided to finish my sorcerer’s love story.

This travelogue was an opportunity to share my wisdom with the world—or a VIP ticket for the world to laugh at me. Either way, it is too late to turn back now because this happens to be book one in the series. I intend to share with you my adventures in different parts of the world. Moving forward, I will tell the events as they truly occurred and may lightning strike me right now if I tell a single lie. However, before we share this journey, my dear reader, allow me to introduce myself.

I am an ordinary gentleman. When I am not travelling and when I am not asleep, I go to a nine-to-five job for a major Financial & Brokerage Institution. Because of some non-disclosure document I signed, I will call my employer FBI (not to be confused with the F.B.I., or Federal Bureau of Investigation). I work from what we call the Advice Hub, where my fancy title is Special Financial Advisor. I like the Special part because it sounds like an elite task force—like an Alpha Squad in the C.I.A. of finance.

I am one of those guys who only gets three weeks’ vacation. I am also allowed to get sick four times a year. Last year I completely forgot to be sick, but next year I plan to be sick for all those days and more. I am sure I will be sick. I can pre-feel it.

I would love two months’ paid vacation, though. Some people I work with at the Hub— those who have six weeks’ vacation—have been working for FBI for more than fifteen years. According to my calculations I will have my two months’ paid vacation just before I turn ninety years old. Now, I cannot wait for sixty years; I can only enjoy the small time I have to make some memories. I will share those memories with you, starting with my trip to Mexico.

***

I only use my three weeks to travel, preferably in three different cities. Last year I went to Quebec City, Vancouver, and Mexico (the country, not the city). I like to spend no more than one week in a foreign land—or anywhere else other than my apartment, for that matter—for two reasons. One, I think that in one week I can see enough of the wonders that a place has to offer. It is enough time for me to wander around without tiring myself, or before I get bored. And two, if I stay more than a week, my house plants can die. They have suffered enough, and on many occasions I have forgotten to water some of them to death. I took an oath never again to own a plant that requires daily attention. If for some mean reason, a friend gifts me such a plant, I am prepared to take that friend to court.

It was starting to get cold as we approached the Canadian winter. The weather was threatening to hit zero degrees before November. As the temperature went down, my morale went down with it. We were entering a harsh winter season starting in November; Mexico on the other hand seemed to be stuck in July, and had no intention of ending their pleasant summer anytime soon. Their sun was shining brighter; accordions, banjoes, guitars, and marimbas were playing, and the best decision any smart individual in my situation could do was to book the soonest ticket to Cancún, Mexico.

I will not trouble my reader with boring details of what happened at Montreal airport because trust me you do not want to know. I am instead fast-forwarding to the good stuff, where I arrived at the hotel in Mexico early in the evening. At the reception area I was greeted with sparkling juices, mimosa, and some champagne. Then I was driven to my room near the ocean. No sooner had I put the bags in my room than I went to have some food in the restaurant, where a tourist interrupted my meal to inform me that every night the hotel offers some kind of performance to entertain the guests.

Here I will start by telling you a thing I learned from watching a girl who danced that night as if nothing else in Mexico mattered, as if it was the last night she would ever have. It was just her and the music. Everybody else listened to the music from the loudspeakers, but I believe that she was listening to a better version of the music that was playing in her head. I waited for her to come back on stage on following evenings, only to learn that the hotel management changes performers every night.

To recall things and events I came up with the idea of referring to some days after that night’s performance by different terms; Pop Day instead of Thursday, Magic Night instead of Wednesday, Girl’s Night instead of day one, and so on.

That night for example, we were entertained as usual. That day’s theme was pop songs. The musical group performed hits that proved to be loved by a bigger audience during different years and eras. I was looking forward to that great song that King David composed that pleased the Lord. Or the one that he breakdanced to until his clothes fell off, but the performers limited the artists to Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jackson, and a few other singers the world has heard of.

This performance in particular helped me understand something—or got me confused more than I already was about the subject of grace and finesse. On the first night’s performance for example, that girl danced so elegantly that every move suited her. Other girls did the same moves, but to me they might as well have been absent. As a matter of fact if they told me that every dancer except her was doomed to catch malaria the following day, I would still go to see her solo performance.

One of the male dancers did the move like everybody else. It was timely, he knew all of the steps by heart, he even had a suspicious smile on his face, but he managed to look like a lead member of a marching band. He looked like a soldier that they dragged from the middle of an enemy ambush—bullets, grenades, and everything flying above his mortal head— and asked him to dance.

There came a moment when this soldier and his fellows were going to perform some Michael Jackson songs. MJ was one of the most graceful, talented, and perfectionist performers the world has ever seen. I can’t think of anyone with more finesse—other than Louis de Funès, of course. My dear soldier butchered Michael’s song, and I have to admit that I had never seen anything that funny in a while. I even shed two tears. But because of the respect I have for Michael, I had to be serious. I decided that after that song I would not watch another. I would rather send Michael Jackson to war armed with a heavy machine gun to defend humanity against an alien invasion, than watch that man dance to Billie Jean. "If he tries again, I told myself, I will have to leave or grab him off stage."

I waited every night for the girl who danced with grace on the first day. That was one of the reasons I attended the other performances, but she and her group never came back. Truth be told, I am just glad that I saw her performance. I guess that is the point of travelling. Years after the trip, we only remain with a few good memories, and we are glad that we travelled and experienced something special. It can be a big thing, a beautiful panorama view of the ocean. It can also be something as simple as a dancing Mexican girl with a bow in her hair.

Abracadabra

I started the following day with a medium breakfast. I had some soft waffles, eggs, and some coffee. I do not know what witchcraft the chef put into the meal because it was so good that it could convert the meanest desperado into a nice gentleman for a day. That meal put me in a good mood and allowed me to forgive the previous night’s dancing commando for his crimes against Michael Jackson.

The main activity on the Magic Day was to go to Chichén Itzá. I wanted to see the pyramid. My untraveled mind thought that pyramids were only in Giza, Egypt. Chichén Itzá is a ruin, showing proofs of the Mayans’ existence. It is currently located in the state of Yucatán, Mexico, unless it moves. At the centre of the ruin there is a medium-size pyramid with an interesting acoustic design. If you position yourself facing the stairs and clap your hands, you can hear some melodic echoes. The sound seems to climb all the way to the chamber situated at the top of the pyramid.

The first time I heard about the Mayans was in the year 2000. It was said that these ancient geniuses thought that the world was ending in that year. If you are reading this, the world has not ended yet. If you are listening to the audio version or someone is reading it you, then, my dear friend, you are in heaven.

Hollywood made so many movies about that prophecy. It was scary. I was a boy living in Rwanda then. One